In my Collaborative Process class, a question is sent out each week which we are expected to answer in the next seven days. This weeks' question is, basically (I haven't got the e-mail to give the verbatim), "As an artist, how do you look at the world and how is that different from when you're not looking at the world as an artist?"
If we're supposed to be artists, shouldn't we be looking at the world as artists? It is given that artists create. Anything created is a perception of the world. Any play, any dance, any poem, any painting, any piece of music is an expression of how we come to the world and what our experience is. Art literally is life.
I believe it was Sophocles who said that life as we know it is like looking through a curtain. The other side of the curtain holds reality, and the curtain would be lifted when we died and we would see the true aspects of everything. Reality is merely looking at a fuzzy version of the real thing. Theatre, then, forces people to face away from the curtain and try to see the reflection there. They didn't have photocopiers in ancient Greece, but this guy still knew that a copy of a copy cannot have the quality of the original.
Today, we disagree with Sophocles. We don't see theatre as a copy of a copy; rather an attempt to clarify what we see. In a way, to try to draw back the curtain to get a better look at what might really be there. The arts are the manner we choose to try to make contact with what is "real".
So, if a person is an artist, it ought to follow that this is the sort of thing they are always doing, if they really are an artist. A writer discovers that they must write to try to convey with words the things that they feel and experience in life. A painter must express the beauty or uglyness they see in the world around them with their brushes. If someone truly is an artist, this is not something from which they can seperate themselves. This is why it is their passion: no matter what anyone says they must go on doing it in order to continue to get up in the morning. Artists look at the world and they have an unstoppable urge to try to share what they see with others.
At least, that's how it seems it has to be. If you believe yourself to be an artist, this is absolutely necessary. The drive to create, to share your perception of the world, to bring things to life and light: that's what being an artist is. If that drive is in you, you are an artist, and you can't help it. If it isn't, then it isn't, so maybe you're a racecar driver instead, but that's because you have the urge to drive racecars.
If the passion is not there, you cannot call yourself an artist, or a racecar driver. If you can live without doing something, maybe you are just a hobbiest, or an enthusiast, or even a buff, and that is perfectly fine. That's the question, do I have to do this? Is this life and death? If the answer is yes, well, and perhaps it is romantic of me to say so, that is what you are.
When it comes right down to it, if you're really an artist, you see the world through the eyes of an artist. If you're not an artist, you don't. There is no halfway. Artistry is not something you can easily turn on and turn off, at least, I don't think it should be.
Hmmm, this makes my response all that much easier.